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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
There are pop-up pics and links all over the place here. In text they are indicated by a double underline like this:
mouse-overing brings the pop-up up and clicking (usually) goes to the link |
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My Dear Americans,
the weather here finally being all blue-skyely, warmly pleasant I decided to take a walk up by the old school, ...in The Beatles Good Morning Good Morning sense. Nothing had (since the sixties) NOT changed, it's decidedly not the same. [sings-or rather pinches the Beatles singing] I've got nothing to say but that's okay Good Morning, Good Morning, Good... |
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My Dear Americans,
"The Monk Arnulphus uncorked his ink
That shone with a blood-red light...
The Porphyrogenita Zoë the fair
Is about to wed with a Prince much older,—" |
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My Dear Americans,
when I was young (Oh! So many years ago...) cycling in the summer, usually with a couple of the other guys, was one of our favourite activities. |
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The birds that lurk around our back patio down here in Texas are like that (I'm sure completely undeserved) stereotype of the American Tourist Abroad, you know demanding, aggressive, loud and, if Georgia has anything to do with it (the way she ladles out the bird seed and bark butter), overweight. And we have SO many different species, crabby cardinals, bossy blue jays, grotty grackles, rather cute finches of a reddish hew, one wren, two different types of woodpecker (leading me to ask 'How much wood would a woodpecker peck if a woodpecker pecked with his pecker?' and don't you wish I hadn't? ), dozy doves by the dozen (or as we call them pigeons), on occasion and when the rest are, for some inexplicable reason absent, a Cooper's hawk, and of course grillions of sparrows chirping noisily away: which, were I Dr Doolittle, I would understand to be saying: 'hello bird', 'hello other bird' 'hello other other bird' 'Now sod off the lot of you! This is my food! Mine!! MINE!!!' and so forth.... [over RudeBird1] they are SO demanding, I swear I recently heard one , probably at me and certainly for not adding extra bird seed and bark butter to the vast heaps Georgia leaves them.
But, in spite of their noisy demands, this essay is in fact NOT about those fat and angry birds!
So let's forget those evil little buggers, 'cause actually it is about this:
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The other day, well really quite while ago by the time you hear this, and much to my surprise, someone at work mentioned that yet another round of those Olympic Game thingies was going on in London. They seemed to think that I should be taking an interest since it was being held in the land of my birth, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that A) I had carefully avoided the damn thing by making quite sure that my visit, earlier this year, was most definitely when it wasn't being held, on the grounds of London already being wildly over-crowded even before they shoved a great load of athletes and spectators and what have you into it, and B) that I had, in the time between said avoidily visit and the other-day mentioning, completely forgotten about the damn thing. So I rushed home (well, not immediately, I did wait for my usual knocking-off time) and checked it out on the BBC site so I'd have something to add to the next Olympic mentioning session at work, if there happened to be one.
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So I'll admit right at the beginning that I find a certain irony in the fact that there is so much high-tech, on-line, modern stuff devoted to folk who study ancient things. It makes them sort of like... environmentalists armed with chain saws.
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Pancake Day has just passed, or rather (and bearing in mind that England hasn't been Catholic for centuries) let's give, it as we should, its more official name of Shrove Tuesday, but whatever we call it, it has still just passed, and since I haven't been shriven (not in a gescrifens age) I am now riven (which of course is almost a given)---Oh! Um! Sorry! You do know what the shriving that may well lead to Shrove Tuesday means, don't you??
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My daughter Rowena Hrothwyn1 tells me (while living up to her well-earned cognomen of Attila-the-Honey, and all that entails in the Flagellum Dei department) tells me (and when you've been told by Attila-the-Honey, my little Flagellum Dei, you stay told) tells me that I must (absolutely must) tell you all that you're celebrating Christmas at quite the wrong time.
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I have just discovered something utterly, utterly disquieting about this current age.
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With all the media attention being given to the lead-up to that silly Upcoming Olympic Thingie in Beijing I thought that this is an appropriate time for me to tell you a little known part of the history...
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